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There are books no meant for Right-wingers like me, some would say. On the face of it, Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous is one such book. But then, a question kept coming back to me again and again while I read this book- How often does it happen that you do not agree (even detest) many things the author writes but still are unable to put the book down on account of an unmitigated charm of brilliantly written words which do not let you go? This work of fiction is not a fiction too far away from the real world. It draws characters from real, contemporary world, name them differently (only slightly, so as the resemblance to the person living and dead is pronounced and hard-to-miss). The writer's journalistic prejudices come in clear view when he writes about Damodarbhai , the Miss Laila equivalent of the Prime Minister Narendra Damodarbhai Modi, or when he writes about Sangh (he calls it that, plainly and simply). Damodarbhai never actually steps into the story, but keeps hoverin…

There are some books which take time to grow on you. Some books will never hold you long enough to be able to impact you unless you are, well, their 'type'. Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre is one such book. I, fortunately or unfortunately, am of the type. I remember finding in a moment of serendipity, Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche one night in the shared rented house, left by the landlord gathering dust in a shelf, and staying up till the dawn reading it. I found myself a changed man after reading that. I read Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground much later and the philosophy lingered for a very long time. Those were the books from the aftermath of which my modest intellect could barely survive. A philosophical Novel, which is more of a study in existential philosophy than a Novel with a story-line, places Sartre in the list of greatest existentialist writers in the history. It is a matter of sheer coincidence that I read Nausea and The Fall by Albert Camus in a gap of…

It doesn't take long for the mob to appropriate the ownership of the anger of common men and women. Before one could even take note, a rightful fury fades in the surging, unruly waves of voices calling for violence. What begins as a worthy protest, quickly descends into dark, disgusting and dirty depths of fanatic fury. In no time, we becomes them and once the faces are wrapped into the color of the blood, it is impossible to identify the one from the other. We have seen this earlier and at times dropped our heads in disgust, turned our noses upwards in annoyance when voices rose and "Satanic Verses" - a novel by one excellent writer, Salman Rushdie was withdrawn. When there were rioting men out on the streets for a Facebook post, we laughed at the those highly-inflammable sensitivity of men with allegiance to intolerant middle-eastern minds of the people, stilling stuck in the middle-ages. Whenever debates happened on the growing intolerance among the Hindus vis-a-vis I…

The Making of Bharatउत्तरम यत्समुद्रस्य, हिमाद्रेश्चैव दक्षिणम। वर्ष तद्वारातम नाम भारती सन्तति। - विष्णु पुराण "The land which lies north of the Oceans, and on the South of
the Snow-peaked Mountains, there live the descendants of Bharat, after whom the
land shall be named." – Vishnu Purana There has been an agenda in the Independent India to prove
that India did not exist as an entity before the British or the
Mughals landed, depending on whether the Historian owes allegiance to Madarassa or to Macaulay. There are facts and references spread out and people
like us who spend large part of our non-entitled lives chasing the middle-class
dream of career and life, depend on their interpretation and inference to learn
our history. Once we know our History, we understand our unifying and common
origin. It then becomes difficult for those wanting to draw wedge between us,
to do that. It also makes them difficult to continue their intellectual
hegemony over the people who have disc…